My own mother gave me some splendid advice when I was growing up. Unfortunately, much of Mom’s advice shed light on nothing. Absolutely nothing at all.

Mothers are the greatest dispensers of advice since God said, “Let there
be light.” Some, not me, refer to it as maternal instinct.
My own mother gave me some splendid advice when I was growing up.
Unfortunately, much of Mom's advice shed light on nothing. Absolutely
nothing at all.
Let me outline some advice my mother gave me that, to this day, I have
no idea what she was talking about.
I distinctly remember my mother standing before me, with hands on her
hips, scolding me for something and then saying, “Who do you think you
are?”
This always disturbed me and caused me to wonder about my nativity. As a
young person, I often pondered this question myself.
As with most teens, I had long moments of identity crisis. (When you are
young most of your energy goes into producing hormones, and so the
brain functions on low voltage.) It greatly confused me that the person
who should know who I was, asked me the question I had been asking
myself. If she does not know who I am, what hope do I have?
Then there was the time I asked my mother for money. She whirled around
and replied, “Do you think money grows on trees?”
Up to that point, I have never given the matter much thought. I simply
assumed money came from my father going to work and being paid.
However, here was something new to ponder. Where does money come from,
really? What added to my confusion was the name of our bank The Elm
Tree Branch of First National Bank of Harrisburg. Now I was totally
confused.
When I was quite young, I remember asking my mother for something in the
store. I think it was some small toy that I took a fancy to and asked
my mother to buy it for me. She flatly refused. I complained and
demanded to know why. She looked me straight in the eye and said,
“Because I am the mother, that's why.”
To this day, I still do not know what in the world that statement meant.
What did her being a mother have to do with buying me that toy?
When she saw my confusion, she told me, “When you have children of your
own, you will understand.” I have children of my own as well as
grandchildren, and I still do not know what she meant. It must be a
mother thing, which is all I know.
Then there was the time I wanted to do something with some friends and
my mother would not let me. “But everyone else is going,” I protested
in vain. That's when my mother gave me her spin on the situation at
hand.
“What if EVERYONE jumped off a cliff? Would you do it, too?”
The thing that confused me was, nobody was going to jump off any cliff.
In fact, nobody in his or her right mind would ever think of such a
stupid thing. Nobody, that is, but my mother. I figured she must have
gotten her sadistic side from her mother. It must be something mothers
pass on to their daughters, because as a man, I don't get it.
Most memorable of her nuggets of wisdom to me is that piece of advice I
still abide by. Before I would leave the house, my mother would say,
“Make sure you have clean underwear on in case you get in a car
accident and have to go to the hospital.”
I have never figured out what clean underwear has to do with going to
the hospital, but that piece of advice made for the worst day of my
high school years. Just as I drove into the school parking lot one day
it dawned on me that I had forgotten to put on clean underwear. Panic
raced through my teenage heart like never before. I was certain some
disaster awaited me around the next corridor.
By the end of the day, I was a nervous wreck. Driving home, I was sure
something would happen to me, putting me in the hospital. I imagined
myself being rushed into surgery and the first thing the medical team
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